Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, popularly known as Virginia Tech (VT), is a land-grant university in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1872 as an agricultural and mechanical land-grant college, Virginia Tech is a research university with the largest full-time student population in Virginia and one of the few public universities in the United States that maintains a corps of cadets. The main Virginia Tech campus is located in the New River Valley in the valley and ridge physiographic region of the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, a few miles from the Jefferson National Forest in Montgomery County. In 1872, the Virginia General Assembly purchased the facilities of Preston and Olin Institute, a small Methodist school in rural Montgomery County with federal funds provided by the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. The Commonwealth incorporated a new institution on that site, a state-supported land grant military institute called the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. Under the 1891–1907 presidency of John M. McBryde, the school organized its academic programs into a traditional four-year college.